In a way to stray from the normally serious and at times heavy nature of this blog I decided to cover something a little bit lighter this month. Hair, and it’s not just because I have beautiful flowing locks of brown/black hair, but its just something that people honestly don’t think about all too often and yet it takes up so much of our lives.

You see, just like for girls, puberty is a very strange time for us.  Other the hormonal cocktail coursing through our veins, hair, and body growth are two things we have to face.  Now growing taller, getting deeper voices was never something I felt self-conscious over, quite the opposite, I enjoyed every second of it.  The hair, on the other hand, was a very different issue.  For guys, hair becomes thicker and more noticeable. This is usually when things start to change depending on your genes and a bit of luck. I still remember vividly when this began to happen.  Changing in a locker room and looking down at my chest to see darker more pronounced hairs take root.  Before I knew it, it was everywhere, and for the most part, I was the only one who had it in spades. It was very strange, and for a while I was a bit embarrassed of it.  Even now, its at times a very funny thing to me.  If I wanted to go through the regular effor to remove it (which I have done with shaving and an attempt with my friends at some amature waxing (don’t ask, and yes it was as painful as it sounds)) it seems as time goes on it gets more difficult and time consuming.  It took a while not to feel uncomfortable with my shirt off, and its not like hollywood is known for having hairy actors.

But that’s not even the half of it. Learning to shave my face at first was a very exciting time, though it was nothing more than peach fuzz, by the time I was a junior in high school I was doing it regularly enough for it to become an inconvenience. This is given the fact that since it comes in patches, its like a jigsaw puzzle of epic purportions hoping the right pieces come together so you can actually make something cool out of it. I was lucky, I had more complete hair than guys my age but it also came with the price of having to shave more. So I grew out a goatee, and like all the other subsequent times I have grown out my facial hair, more guys comment on it then women.  Not to say that it isn’t nice to hear you have nice facial hair from a dude, but it isn’t exactly what I was going for when I decided to stop shaving for a while.  Doing it regularly is bothersome but necessary, but I count the minutes as I take in front of the mirror doing this repeatative task.

Lastly, its always strange, how many different styles of hair guys can have, depending on how the hair on their head compliments the hair on their face. A stereotype is that guy can have one hair style that lasts him a lifetime. Now the current generation has a little bit more fluidity of hair style but the traditional cuts are seen as more professional or clean.   I have to say though it really comes into perspective when there is a chance you could lose your hair, hair becomes very important.  Now, it’s something I have thought about, my dad is partially bald, and no matter how much I look I can never get a definitive answer as to which side of the family tree that gene comes from and to be honest, unless its good news I don’t want to know.  So I take the time to have a variety of different types of hair styles and types to make the most of what I have.  Who knows where it will end up but I realized that embracing what you have is really the way to go.

A lot of our lives are devoted to some form of hair management, and it show when there isn’t a lot of effort we put in.  I know guys don’t take as long or use as much product as girls but there is still there is a lot of hair in being a man, trust me, a little too much sometimes.